


connect the dots.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Late Night Conversations, M/M, No Sex, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Season/Series 03, Sexual Tension, Stiles Stilinski Has ADHD, Underage Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Stiles doesn’t have that many lines or dots.  Stiles has always kept things small, has never quite been the most popular dude.  It doesn’t take Stiles long to figure out where the new markings are, this time around,  because he knows what his back looks like, and the newly drawn lines are near the very core of everything.
Almost at the very center of his back is the solid black dot that is Scott.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shift (clarz)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarz/gifts), [bladeofsolsthiem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeofsolsthiem/gifts).



Stiles stares at the wall in front of him.  It’s plastered with band posters and pictures and slips of paper, more creased edges and corners than actual wall.  He can make out the vague outline of a few band names in the dimness of the room, the only light coming from the brief flashes of notifications from his phone on his desk.  There’s nothing he can see that can catch his thoughts and redirect them, though, or slow them down into anything stable.

He forgot to take his meds in the morning, his carefully-labeled “TAKE YOUR MEDS DUMBASS” alarm going off and getting shut off in a half-awake daze.  He drowned himself in coffee on the way to school and had a soda at lunch, the caffeine rush turning into a low grade headache by evening.  He made the terrible decision to opt for the temporary fix and throw more caffeine at it, grinding through the last of his homework before the focus started to fade and the jitters started to hit, his ability to sit still and his attention span shot to shit.

It’s 4 AM, and he’s so tired that he’s pretty sure nothing’s actually real, his thoughts dulled and incoherent and sporadic.  He’s hit the point of being too tired to sleep, his whole body resigned to lying awake even though his brain is screaming that it’s just time to pass the fuck out already.  But he can’t even manage to stop fidgeting, his body sore from sleeplessness, an ache settling into his skin from staying in one place for even just the briefest period of time, forcing him to keep moving.

It doesn’t help that he was already sore in the first place, before it hit 4:02 AM.  Sore and miserable.  It would be less frustrating if it were just the ever present anxiety aches, his shoulders and back sore and his jaw locked from the constant tightening of his muscles, his fingers sore from gnawing his nails too short and picking at his hangnails with the frustratingly uneven stubs.  But his back aches for a reason that might actually be worse than just his poor posture and anxiety.

The feeling has faded since earlier that day, when it was a sharp pain frustratingly close to the center of his back, a thick line etched into the constellation of interconnected relationships.  He could feel another, thinner line being marked into his back afterward, almost an afterthought after the sharp admission of the first mark.

Stiles had ducked out of class to go to the bathroom to try to make sense of it, had lifted his shirt and contorted himself to get the right angle so he could take a picture of his back in the reflection of the mirror.  He stared at it throughout the rest of the class, absorbing not one single word that was coming out of Finstock’s mouth, his phone battery dying rapidly as he tapped at the screen every time the phone cradled carefully in his lap started to dim.

The first time he remembers learning about the marks on his back, he was young.  He came home from the sandbox, confused at why his back hurt but eager to talk about his brand new friend Scott, nonetheless.  His father explained patiently to him, about soulmate marks that capture the importance of relationships, about the way they’re reflected on skin.  About how for most people, their marks are private, and how marks can change over time.

The core of Stiles’ marks are mostly the same now as they were back then.  In the center of his back is the usual dot that he’d learned is the Stiles dot, vivid red, the only flash of color on his back.  There’s the usual small network of black dots branching out from there, representing the connections he’d made early in his life, the other human beings that had become a permanent part of his story.  There’s the black dot for his dad, connected to his dot with a thick black line.  There’s the dot next to it, the one that Stiles still doesn’t like to dwell on, connected to Stiles’ dad and to Stiles himself, a fleshy pink, the color of a slowly fading scar.  

There are further out dots with longstanding connections, Heather and Harley, Melissa extending out from Scott.  There are the people Stiles has come to know through the werewolf mess.  Erica and Allison, redder pinks than Stiles’ mother, the losses more recent.  Malia and Kira and Lydia, and, to Stiles’ chagrin, Jackson, through Lydia.  Some of his dad’s coworkers and a couple other people from school fill in the gaps.  

There’s a lot of empty space on Stiles’ back, like there’s a whole lot more story left to tell.  A lifetime to aim for markings like Melissa’s, with so many maintained connections from people she’s helped and lives she’s changed at the hospital that the dots bleed off of her back and around her sides, up to her neck and along her shoulders and upper arms.

Stiles doesn’t have that many lines or dots.  Stiles has always kept things small, has never quite been the most popular dude.  It doesn’t take Stiles long to figure out where the new markings are, this time around,  because he knows what his back looks like, and the newly drawn lines are near the very core of everything.

Almost at the very center of his back is the solid black dot that is Scott.  The only line out of Stiles’ dot as thick as the one connecting Scott and Stiles is the one connecting Stiles and his dad.  He and Scott have had years to grow, years of friends to best friends to boyfriends, the deepening of their relationship only making the black line darker and thicker.  

There are branches out from Scott with links back to Stiles, people that only entered Stiles’ life because Scott brought them there, like Isaac, or Boyd.  It’s where Allison started out, before there was even a line connecting her dot to Stiles’.  And he’d watched others fill in, besides her.  Stiles is usually able to guess who the dot is supposed to represent based on the timing and the line, the thickness of the connections always very telling.

But, more than any of the others, there’s one dot that Stiles has been watching vigilantly from the first moment it appeared on Stiles’ back.  It appeared in the discomforting sterility of Deaton’s clinic, Stiles’ eyes fixed on blackening veins, desperation in the air and the scent of sick and sweat clogging Stiles’ nose.  He opted not to dwell on it, then, hoping that it was a fluke, one of those “I just almost watched you almost die and now we’re inextricably linked” kind of things.  There was no line connecting back to his own dot; Derek formed as an isolated point, an island to himself, uncomfortably close to the center of Stiles’ back.

Stiles didn’t know it was something he had to worry about until he felt the very, very thin foundations of a line connecting Derek and, of all people, Scott.  Stiles brought it up to Scott that night, from the safety of Stiles’ bed, the ache from the new line mostly faded, but Stiles’ painful and confused awareness of it still vivid.

“There’s a line for me, too,” Scott told Stiles, though he seemed much less bothered by it.  He twisted and pulled his shirt up, revealing the smooth skin of his back to Stiles.  

Stiles was reminded of how easy things were between them, the casual kind of intimacy that let him see this, that gave him glimpses of the most private parts of Scott.  The way Scott’s center dot is green, not red, like Stiles’.  The way Scott’s back has always been filled with more dots than Stiles’, lines tenuously drawn between Scott and people Stiles barely remembers them interacting with, because Scott has always opened himself up for other people like that.  The way Scott’s dad and Scott’s paternal extended family have dulled over the years, not to the pink of Stiles’ mother, but to a faded grey that has always made Scott uncomfortable and a little bit angry, on edge that one day his dad is going to try to waltz back into his life like he didn’t leave, like he thought he had the right to be there.  

The line between Scott and Derek was thicker than Stiles thought it had the right to be, from the very start.  It was certainly thicker than Stiles’ back showed it being.  Scott gave a half-hearted explanation, something about Derek calling them brothers, something about sharing in a werewolf bond.  

Stiles, even then, thought Derek was more trouble than he was worth, and that Scott’s apparent trust in him was probably going to get them both killed.  But Scott’s Derek line only got thicker and thicker as time went along, Stiles catching glimpses as he stripped Scott of his shirt.  He ignored it, pressing selfish kisses to his own dot and the dark black thick line that connected him to Scott’s green, enjoying the way it made Scott shiver, made Scott drag Stiles back up to kiss his neck, his mouth.

From the thickness of Stiles’ DerekScott line, he thought things weren’t changing that much, in actuality.  His denial was quite impressive and persistent, he thinks, which is par for the course for him, part of his “ignore problems until they magically disappear” strategy to life.  It’s much harder to ignore the line now that it’s drawn thicker on Stiles’ back.  It’s confirming something he didn’t want to think too hard about, the way Derek looked at Scott like he wasn’t some unfathomable sort of gnat.

Soft, Stiles always thought.  As soft as he’d ever seen Derek, except for maybe with Cora.  Derek smiled at Scott.  Derek replied to Scott’s texts.  

The timing of the thickening of the line seemed inexplicable until after class, Scott skittish at their lunch table until he mentioned that he needed to Talk To Stiles.  Scott showed Stiles a series of texts between him and Derek that made Stiles’ stomach clench.  The word “love” was tossed out, and the conversation went… pretty much where one could expect from there.  There was a whole mutual admission of feeling thing that worried Stiles a lot, because it wasn’t something he and Scott had _talked_  about, even though he knew, really, as much as he wanted to ignore it.

“You can do whatever you want,” Stiles had said, and it came out way more bitter than he intended, and it got Scott’s brows furrowed and Scott’s shoulders tense, and Stiles hated himself a little bit in that moment, hated the way his stomach curled around possessiveness and selfishness and bitterness.

“Nothing would make you any less,” Scott had said to Stiles gently, trying to soothe over the hurt he knew was there, because he knows Stiles better than just about anyone.  He knows how to diffuse Stiles’ hurt when it rears its ugly head, knows that Stiles isn’t worried about Scott and Derek doing anything together so much as he’s worried that Scott is going to run away with Derek and leave him in the dust.

They talked about it again, after school, in the car on the way home.  The conversation was calmer, this time, Stiles’ emotions still boiling up but not over, only manifesting in the restless tapping of his fingers against the steering wheel.

“There should be rules,” Stiles had said.  “He’s, like.  Old.  I’m pretty sure this is all, like, technically illegal for another year.”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Scott groaned.  

“Just sayin’,” Stiles interrupted, before Scott could make any claims of false modesty.  Stiles has done enough bumping and grinding with Scott to know that he has a perfectly healthy sex drive.  “If I were with him, I’d want to be hittin’ that, like, right away, bro.  His muscles are one of his defining features.  Those and his hands.  And his stubble, because that probably has to feel pretty good on an ass.  But that’s all.”

“We weren’t planning on doing that right away,” Scott says.  “Or, at all, if it wasn’t okay with you.”

Stiles could easily have said it wasn’t okay and only felt mildly guilty.  He absolutely had it in him to veto the whole thing, to say no.  He and Scott are technically open, and have been from the start, because there was Allison and Scott, and then there is that thing that Stiles sees on the horizon with Kira and Scott, and there have been a number of kisses on Stiles’ part in the last couple of years, most notably that time that Stiles totally made out with Malia.

Stiles honestly doesn’t think he has a real reason to say no except for spite.  And at the end of the day, though he could say no, he doesn’t want to.  Scott wants this, and Stiles admittedly trusts Derek more than he _used_  to.  Stiles doesn’t have any more reason to worry about Scott leaving him for Derek than he does for Kira, or did for Allison.  

And besides.  It would make Scott happy, and that’s something Stiles really does like to do.

So Stiles dealt with that thickening line.  Stiles saw it and Stiles talked to Scott, and now, lying in his bed with the clock slowly ticking closer to 4:15 AM, Stiles can make sense of that.  He may not immediately love it, but he understands where it came from, and he played a role in solidifying it.

  
It’s the second line, more than anything, that has him anxious.

It’s a thin line, not as precarious as the one that connected Stiles and Isaac, but close.  But it’s impossible not to notice it in the face of Derek and Scott’s line thickening.  It’s impossible to look to the center of his back and not see the way the line had formed, had contributed to the crowding of the space around his dot.  

Stiles doesn’t want his dot connected to Derek’s.  At least, not like this, not now.

If Stiles had told Scott about it, Scott would’ve had some sort of explanation, he’s sure.  Scott has all sorts of theories about the sometimes nonsensical timing of the marks, about why dots appeared when.  Scott was always more steeped in science and shit than Stiles was, and while Stiles always thought that the markings looked like playing connect the dots with the stars in the sky, Scott sees, like.  Molecules, or something.  Atoms.  Stiles remembers when they started learning chemistry in middle school, only the barest brushes with electrons and balancing equations.  Stiles remembers the way Scott’s eyes lit up when he saw a diagram of a carbon atom, one of the ones with the lines and the dots for bonds and valence electrons.  Stiles remembers later that night, the way Scott rested his hand on Stiles’ back, like he was drawing a connection Stiles’ brain wouldn’t have made.  

Over the years Stiles has heard dozens of Scott’s theories about how it all lines up, about the way people sometimes come in pairs, about the way sometimes lines are drawn when new dots are added.  He thinks it’s related to stabilization as much as closeness.  Stiles can see how he’d make that argument now.  How the line is about balance, or something.  Or, from a more sentimental approach, Scott’s eyes focused and earnest, about how Scott and Stiles come as a pair, about how they’re so inseparable that of course Scott being with Derek would link Stiles to Derek, too.  Scott would hope that it would bring them closer, because there’s more room for them to work together now than ever before.

But Stiles didn’t tell Scott.  Stiles didn’t want to get Scott’s hopes up.  Stiles didn’t want Scott tucking it into the back of his head, developing Plans to bring Derek and Stiles together, to make this work.  

Stiles knows that he has fewer and fewer reasons for his bitterness, these days.  He knows that Derek has started to stabilize.  He doesn’t know if it’s the not being an alpha thing or the not being constantly in danger of losing his life (or the lives of everyone close to him) thing or even just the growing up and getting an apartment and starting to settle down thing.  It could be from having someone his own age to hang out with, with Parrish in town.  It could even be from being around Scott.  Stiles has seen and experienced first-hand the way Scott tends to rub off on people, the way he makes people want to be better versions of themselves.

It doesn’t mean the bitterness is easy for Stiles to let go of.  In fact, if it’s the last reason, if it’s Scott rubbing off on Derek, it almost makes Stiles more bitter.  It’s always been hard for Stiles, sharing Scott’s attention.  He’s had to get better at it over the last few years, because he knows it’s selfish, knows he can’t just keep Scott to himself, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it.  He especially doesn’t have to like it with Derek, who shares stuff with Scott that Stiles never will, and who Stiles thinks may actually appreciate Scott almost as much as Stiles himself.

He especially doesn’t have to like it with Derek, who Stiles has wanted from the very start.  Not in a relationship kind of way, but in that kind of… that kind of pent-up rush, in the way Derek inexplicably felt like solid _man_ , all muscle and sweat and hard lines.  The way it only got worse with time, Derek getting stubbly and filling out and getting broader.  The way Derek was red flashing danger signs to Stiles, the kind of awful decision that Scott would usually try to talk Stiles out of making.  

Stiles never made the decision, but now Scott has, and it’s giving Stiles mixed signals, Scott giving Derek the green light of being Someone Safe and Stiles’ gut slamming on the brakes.  Because if they both trust Derek, if Stiles falls into this too, then who is going to be there to pick up the pieces when this inevitably goes to shit?  And what if Derek didn’t even want Stiles in the first place, what if it was one of those things where Stiles’ dick and his head got ahead of reality, extrapolated and doused his memories with thick sexual tension that wasn’t actually there, that he wanted to be there.

Stiles shifts again, rolling onto his side and facing his desk.  He can’t get his arm into a comfortable position, everything feeling like too much pressure, but it’s better than being on his back, right now.  He hates caffeine, and he’s never going to drink it again, ever.  Scott is going to give him those patented Concerned Looks and ask Stiles if he wants him to drive, because it’s almost 4:30 AM and Stiles has to be up in like two and a half hours and at this point, honestly, Stiles might as well just not sleep, because he is increasingly running the risk of just passing the fuck out and sleeping through all four of his alarms.

Just when Stiles considers maybe going to the kitchen to make some coffee and just wait the sunrise out, the phone on Stiles’ desk lights up, this time accompanied by the too-loud buzz of a text.  Stiles drags himself up and out of bed, his body grateful for the change in position but his joints complaining as he stands at his desk, taking three tries to unlock his phone.  No one should be texting him this early (or late) unless the world is crumbling down around them, which, like, Stiles knows his street isn’t the whole world, but a glance outside doesn’t look particularly apocalypse-y.

It takes a second for his bleary eyes to adjust to the bright light and small text on the phone, but when he makes out Derek’s name, he can feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest.  Derek has his number, but rarely uses it, and Stiles knows the timing can’t be a coincidence.  He wonders why the fuck Derek is even up, if this is one of those things where Derek gets up at ass-o’clock in the morning to go run in the dark or some shit like that, or whether Derek is like Stiles and never went to sleep in the first place.  

Either way, the text is short, with punctuation and capitalization and everything.

“Thank you.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to do with it, because, at the end of the day, it wasn’t really his choice.  At the end of the day, Scott is his own person, one who cares about Stiles’ opinions and who would probably have listened to them on this issue no matter what Stiles said, but who didn’t have to.  It is nice, though.  It’s nice to know that Derek acknowledges Stiles’ importance to Scott, acknowledges that Stiles has the power to say no and have it mean something to Scott.

“just don’t fuck it up,” Stiles finally replies.

When Stiles is back in bed, his phone with him, he thinks maybe that might not have been the appropriate response, considering Derek’s history.  But he stands by it, stands by the fact that Scott is worth the time and worth the effort to do things right.

His phone lights up, one last time.

“I have a feeling you’ll let me know if you think I am.”

It’s probably a joke about how loud Stiles is, how opinionated Stiles is, how willing Stiles has been from the start to tell Derek exactly how he feels about things.  But with the line in his back there, there and aching, forcing Stiles to be aware of it, Stiles can’t deny that there’s something else to it, a form of a bond in and of itself.  An opening for Stiles to be involved, to be close to Derek, to keep him in check.

“I will,” Stiles promises.

It feels like a choice that’s too weighty to make at 4:40 AM, but he knows, even sleep-deprived and anxious and bitter as he is, that it’s the right choice to make.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
